“Let go of your shoulders now,” Lilldolly said. “It feels like you have a sack of taters under your skin. There you go. We agreed that you’d do the crying and I’d do the talking. That’s what we said. But I can’t help but wonder what kind of journey got started. No, don’t answer me, you don’t have to say anything, I understand it was something you had to do. You’ve left everything behind, that’s obvious, you’ve got nothing to return to. God have mercy, what don’t we humans have to do to be at peace. I want you to know that it’s the greatest and most important thing we have to do in life, to find our peace. To stay at peace with life. That was the agreement, the promise we made when we first came into this life. To honor that promise you’re allowed to make whatever journeys and do whatever crazy things you have to do. There’s nothing to stop you from that, nothing at all. You’re allowed to cry, as much as you need to. You can throw up too, go on, throw up as much as you can.”
Lilldolly went on talking while she stroked and kneaded Marta’s body. But with an unexpected twist, she suddenly and decisively flipped her over so she wound up sitting on her behind. For an instant they looked at each other, a little surprised. Then Lilldolly grabbed Marta’s chin and held her face.
“But you can’t hide any longer,” she said. “That’s cheating.”
“And you have to watch,” Marta said absently. She wrenched her face loose and began rubbing it with her palms. She looked up, present again, cleared.
“I’m sorry, you have to forgive me. I don’t want to be like this. Your story was so. . intense. I hadn’t expected it to be such an important story. Such a dangerous story, dangerous for me. I’ll carry it here in my heart, like you said, inside what’s beautiful. I’m happy, you see, I’m happy even though it doesn’t make sense and I’m sitting here like an idiot, like a. .”
Lilldolly started laughing her clucking, sparkling laughter, sounding like a lively creek between rocks and suddenly Marta began laughing too; she couldn’t help herself. She just flowed along with it, floated on the laughter itself. She was sucked into it and twirled around inside it; it was like dancing, swimming, playing in water. All she needed to do was look at Lilldolly and see how her laughter made her jerk and jump and that same bliss moved through her as well.
“Oh dear,” Lilldolly said at last. “Dear, how crazy things can be.”
Afternoon had come and the sun penetrated and warmed everything. It moved through the top layer of the soil, into the tree trunks and the timber of the houses. It also penetrated the birds’ soft down, the fur of animals, the anthills, and the stones. It penetrated your skin, your eyes, placed its sweet, warm sun muzzle in your hand.
Arnold had spread sheepskins on the ground in front of the house and was resting with his hat over his face when Lilldolly and Marta returned.
“Well now,” he said from underneath his hat when he heard them. “I’m getting some company here in the sun. At last.”
Then they lay there, the three of them, and let themselves be covered in sun. Marta fell asleep almost immediately and dreamed of the boy. He was calling her as she ran from room to room in a big building looking for him. She had to find him; there was something she had to tell him, something important. Good news. Once, he ran ahead of her in a stairway, he was young and held something in his hand, a piece of fabric. Later, he stood in front of her in a sunny spot in a big hall and he seemed to hover strangely and was trembling somehow and it took a long while before she realized he’d transformed himself into a giant bumblebee.
When she opened her eyes again, Arnold and Lilldolly were drinking coffee on the pelt next to her.
“You fell asleep in the sun,” Arnold said. He handed her a knife and a piece of dried meat he’d been carving from.
“Eat!” he told her. “It’s salty. Good for you.”
She pulled herself up into a sitting position and cut off a small piece of meat.
“You see, we’re talking about Mervas,” Arnold continued. “We’re wondering if we should go on that excursion tomorrow. On the radio, they say the weather’s going to be nice now. Lilldolly says it too; summer’s here now, she says. So we’re considering taking tomorrow off and heading up there.”
Marta nodded. She felt confused. Mervas, she thought. Would it become real now? For real? Perhaps she ought to go there alone? She wasn’t sure. But if Kosti was there, if she was going to meet Kosti, did she want Arnold and Lilldolly to be there too? No, she wasn’t sure.
She nodded again.
“It’ll be fun,” she said.
Arnold laughed and looked from Marta to Lilldolly and then back at Marta again.
“Well, let me tell you, it’s been a while since we went anywhere. There was the dental appointment last winter, of course, a couple of tooth extractions and such. The pharmacy, perhaps the social security office.”
“And the grave,” Lilldolly added. “We went to the grave.”
He seemed taken aback, paused for a moment.
“Yes, the grave. We do have the grave, Lilldolly and I.” He inhaled.
“Yes,” he said, focusing on Marta. “You see. That’s how it is. It was a good thing that you got lost and ended up here. This way we get to go on a little trip before we get stuck to this place like moss on the rocks.” He laughed again.
“We can go shopping too,” Marta said. “And to the grave, if you want. Now that we’re going.”
“No, that’ll be another day,” Lilldolly decided. “Mervas is in the opposite direction altogether. That’ll be a whole other trip. No, let’s go to Mervas. That’ll be something else.”
She peered at Arnold.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s another world. Mervas.”
~ ~ ~
After some discussion, it was settled that Arnold would drive. He was the one who knew the roads the best and was used to being on them, he argued. Lilldolly wanted to sit in peace in the back and have space for her own thoughts and Marta would sit in the passenger seat. She’d have a good view from there and that was important, Arnold reasoned, because she had to learn the way to Mervas. Tasso was also coming along, and he got to sit next to Lilldolly in the back, as he used to. They put sheepskins, food, and the coffeepot in the trunk. Then they took to the road.
Arnold was driving fast, Marta thought, but she didn’t say anything to him about it. After Deep Tarn’s road, they’d ended up on a narrow gravel road that wound through a steep, undulating forest and small ponds like hollows strewn everywhere in the landscape. The spruce trees were sparsely spread; no shrubs or low trees obscured the view. Here and there, a big boulder covered in gray moss rose from the ground. Small ridges pressed against the ground like the backs of animals. Without warning, the trees came to a halt at a gorge that led straight down to another kind of world. Here, everything seemed small and inviting. You wanted to enter among the trees and walk around in those woods. The ground seemed to be padded; perhaps the huldra* moved there on her soft, springy paws.
But suddenly, the narrow road ended and Arnold veered right onto a wider gravel road that cut straight through a landscape that was completely different. Vast and endless, it stretched out with its enormous lakes resting in depressions between the mountains. It was mostly woods and no vistas, young trees and old growth, the sun like a golden caress over the carpet of berry shrubs between the trees. Sometimes they came upon clear-cuts, large, empty areas, but these areas were forests too — missing, petrified forests without trees, woods in waiting.